Dear David Cameron and Nick Clegg,
Whilst I welcome a number of the coalition government’s initiatives (including the stated objective to stop the detention of children for immigration purposes) I’m really struggling to understand why you are refusing to sign up to the EU directive on human trafficking. The main aim of this legislation is to prevent the prosecution of trafficking victims for crimes committed whilst under duress, oppression and slavery. How does this refusal fit with your liberal conservative view of personal responsibility? Surely when under the control of a sex trafficker, a victim’s responsibility is so diminished that prosecution becomes a degradation of human dignity (as well as being a legal minefield). Victims need to be counselled, rehabilitated and given new opportunities to recover from the horror of mental, physical and sexual abuse. It serves no purpose to have the threat of prosecution hanging over their heads to increase their trauma. And we as a society are enhanced when the most vulnerable are treated in such a way as to restore their human dignity.
yours
Gareth Davies
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Frankly I have not understood very much since the election, but I don’t think I am alone.
strange times indeed, Ian, it’s worth watching the exchanges at PMQs on trafficking yesterday- we’re not convinced by the ‘we’re already doing all this’ defence and one source close to the PM admits that there may be a little nod to the Euro sceptics in this.